Marc Hirsch

Marc Hirsch was born in 1945 in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, New York City between the explosion of the test bomb in the desert at White Sands, New Mexico and the dropping of the atomic bomb by the Enola Gay on Hiroshima, Japan. He was raised in the Bronx on the Grand Concourse and 205th Street, coincidentally the home of his fictional heroine Alice White, in three separate apartments in the same building which he combined to make Alice’s abode.Author’s Media Kit (PDF: 10 pgs.)

He attended the Bronx High School of Science, around the corner from his apartment building, and was admitted to both college and medical school in Boston University’s 6 Year Medical Program, graduating in May of 1969.

He moved from Boston to San Francisco to intern at the Pacific Presbyterian Hospital on Clay and Webster Streets. In November of 1969, he was asked to attend to the American Indians of all tribes who had taken over the abandoned island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, California, USA. The peaceful occupation of Alcatraz Island was a protest of the historical removal of Native Americans from their tribal lands by the United States federal government and of the policy of assimilation of tribal culture. The federal policy assimilation, dating to the 1940’s would mean the end of individual tribal identity.

After their first week on the island, ending on Thanksgiving Day 1969, there were plenty of doctors anxious to replace Dr. Hirsch. So, he ate his turkey dinner standing near the actor Anthony Quinn, who had come to lend his support to the cause, and turned his medical duties over to waiting doctors at their request.

Following his internship and a general practice residency in Martinez, California east of the San Francisco Bay, Marc moved to a small island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, Lasqueti Island, 12 miles long and 3 miles wide, in the Strait of Georgia. During his year on the island, he carted over boxes of used paperback murder mysteries by authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Earl der Biggers, reading at night by kerosene lamp, developing a lifelong love of the genre. He also traveled to a nearby island to deliver a beautiful baby girl, who is now in her 40’s and a mother herself. Dr. Hirsch, with his wife Millie, visited “baby” in a moving reunion her, her children, and her own mother, all of whom now live on Lasqueti.

Hirsch returned to the Bay Area in 1973 where he resumed mainstream medical practice, was married, and divorced. In 1990, he moved back to the east coast to live a short distance north of New York City, where he undertook a second residency training to prepare for board certification in Family Medicine. He became Chief Resident of that residency and later, as a board certified private practitioner, was made Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the local hospital. He met his present wife, Mildred Allen, in 1994 and married her in 1995.

Dr. Hirsch has a second-degree black belt in Soo Bahk Do, a Korean martial art. He is also a recovering alcoholic.

In 2008, he moved with Millie, to Kentucky to be near her ailing mother. In 2011, he retired from hospitalist work in Kentucky and began as a volunteer at a local free clinic.

In 2012, he published the first edition of his first book, The Case. In 2014, he contracted with a small publishing company, Books, Authors and Artists, to re-edit and republish The Case, market the screenplay of The Case, which Hirsch had written in 2013, and publish his sequel to The Case, which he has titled Hard Case.Author’s Media Kit (PDF: 10 pgs.)